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Friday, January 30, 2015

Sometimes, you plan to make a nice meal and it ends up a big
pile of mush.I wish that was an analogy, or some sort of lame metaphor.But it’s actually a true story.This past week I was wandering through the grocery store
when I found a whole chicken for a pretty good price. I often buy whole chickens
and give them my version of Thomas Keller’s roast chicken and vegetables.
It’s a simple, sophisticated meal that both
kids and parents enjoy.Yet, for some reason, when I spied this particular chicken,
I had a different idea entirely.I
decided this chicken wanted to be … no, needed to be … the star in another
dish: Chicken Pot Pie.When I say Chicken Pot Pie, I’m not talking about a flaky
little pie with chicken in it, a la Stouffers
or Chicken
Run. I’m talking about Pennsylvania
Dutch Chicken Pot Pie.
﻿

It’s an amazing stew with a savory broth, chunks of chicken
and vegetables, and the trademark fluffy, yet firm noodles that remind every
descendent of a Pennsylvania Dutch cook of cozy Sunday evenings surrounded family,
sitting by a warm fire, and covered with blankets.Those noodles. Oh, those noodles.When I go on an extended low-carb kick, I dream of those noodles.
Those fluffy clouds in your mouth, that happen to taste like chicken. ... Sorry. Too much? For those who don’t know, my mom is part Pennsylvania Dutch
and makes a legendary Chicken Pot Pie. I’ve
always thought that if I opened a food truck – which I have no immediate plans
to do – I’d just sell her pot pie, and I’m sure the food network would
broadcast live from our little culinary trailer.There’s only one problem with the food truck idea and with
my more immediate plans for this one well-priced whole chicken I brought home
from the store on a recent Wednesday: I don’t know how to make Chicken Pot Pie.Some of my other siblings have had the good sense to invite
mom over specifically for a pot pie tutorial. Apparently, I lack good sense.My wife and I have my parents over often. Yet despite
my self-proclaimed abilities in the kitchen (I could have been a chef if things
had worked out differently; or a pro running back, but that’s a different story),
I have never learned the fine art of chicken pot pie making.I know how to make a fair chicken noodle soup, of course,
which is a start. And when I called my mom that night – first to invite her over, then,
upon being refused, just to ask how to make the dish – she told me the a good
broth was the key.I can do a broth, I said to myself. So I decided, “Damn the
torpedoes, full steam ahead … on my pot pie meal plan” -- a quote that surely made
the whole endeavor sound more important than it was. But heck, both the meal
plan and this story left "good sense" in the dust two paragraphs ago.Luckily, my sister, who lives nearby and has had the pot pie
tutorial, called that same evening to inquire about dinner. Her husband was planning to work late, so her and her kid were looking for some company. The invite was extended.She brought more potatoes, a pastry roller, and critical
knowledge.We were all set. So we thought.Unfortunately, we made a few miscalculations. The first misstep
being the amount of time it takes to make pot pie. There’s a reason Dutchie moms
(and progressive Dutchie dads) make pot pie on Sundays. Because the darn thing takes
a long time to make.Not to cook, but to
make.No self-respecting Pennsylvania
Dutch chef would make pot pie on a school night. I’d started the broth earlier, so that was fine. But the
noodles – those damn noodles. It took quite a while to get the noodle dough just
right, with the rolling and the cutting and the fussing and the flouring. Out next miscalculation also had to do with time: that being
how long to cook the darn things. Not
the broth or the vegetables, but the noodles – again with the noodles.Once we got the noodle dough right (we thought), we added them
one-by-one to the boiling broth, which was brimming deliciously with veggies,
chicken and potatoes.“Let it go 20 minutes,” we were told over the phone by our remote
Pennsylvania Dutch consultant, “or until the potatoes are done.” The potatoes were added right before the
noodles, and were therefore a safe barometer of noodle doneness. In theory, anyway.The only question we had was, do the noodles boil for 20 minutes or just simmer. Cooking potatoes in that time requires a boil,
we thought.But we worried the delicate
noodles couldn’t withstand the heat for that long.We chose a full boil.We should have called and asked yet another question. Damn, we should have asked!Whenever you look back on something that ends up all wrong, there is usually one
fatal error.There can be lots of
smaller errors, and pre-errors.But
there’s one fatal error. That was ours. We boiled the hell out of those noodles.
In the end our little family, and my sister and her
child, gathered around the table to eat my first attempt -- solo or otherwise –
at the family favorite: the well-revered, the often-exalted, the rarely-imitated Chicken
Pot Pie of the Pennsylvania Dutch variety.What I served them was a pile of mush.I guess it's time for that tutorial. Mom?Like the article? Know others who may enjoy reading it? Please share it using the buttons below or to the left. Thank you.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

My hands stumbled through the blue cheese case at
Wegman’s I wondered why the heck there are so many varieties of mold-ridden
cheese? And more so, why the good people at Wegman’s insist on stacking the
cheese in their neat little rows with the label’s facing down and the marbles
of cream and green up, forcing the foraging shopper on the hunt for a specific
type to turn over each one to read what it is.

Danablu…

Danish Blue…

Geez, I don’t speak Dutch, but isn’t that the same thing?

“Need help with finding something, my dear?” a thick, short older
woman in a Wegman’s shirt and apron asked with an accent I could almost place. Czech,
maybe. I had two students from Prague recently and heard something familiar in
the way she said “with.” Then again, it could have been German or Hungarian or
Icelandic or Dutch for all I know. Like I can tell one accent from the other from the
sound of “with”?

“I’m looking for Roquefort, actually.”

She stepped away from the cart of cheeses she was pushing and
stepped towards me, punching a stubby finger straight down at a small stack of
cream and green triangles, looking remarkably like all the other varieties.

I turned one over and picked it up. Roquefort. Right beneath
my nose.

“Thanks,” I replied, a bit embarrassed. To make light of my
inferior searching skill I added, “I like to think I would have found it
eventually, but thank you.”

“This is life,” she replied. “Whether it’s a missing bill, a
shoe or something more important, the second you give up looking, there it is.”

A truth I’ve pondered before.

*****

It could be January or the cold or the passing of the
holidays, but in the grey days of winter I often think about the passage of
time. Not just how it leaves us, but how fickle and funny it is. A minute at a
stoplight can feel like a forever, and yet a year can pass in a blink.

It’s odd how once distinct memories of similar things blend,
too, shortening time in the past. Take the annual holiday gatherings, each
their own at one time but melded together over the years into one inseparable
whole. Was it last year that the kids got
the easel, or the year before?I don’t
remember.Our annual vacations to
Hilton Head do the same thing, marrying together into one big blob.

When I first worked in Washington all those years ago, I
took the Metro early each morning to a bus that left the Alexandria metro stop
each day at 6:15 am. For two years, every day, I rode that bus: Bus Number
9.And just how the clock strikes the same number
twice each day, when I was on that bus, it was my world -- mine and the other
daily riders.

Looking back, those five hundred bus rides lasting 15
minutes each come down to a single blob of memories. Even those are foggy.

With the holidays gone again, and New Year upon us, I can’t
help but think what a disappointment 2014 turned out to be. I entered the year
searching for something, hoping for something. For some reason, 14 has always
been my number. I know the reason, a childhood decision when two of my favorite
players – the Orioles’ Mickey Tettelton and Caps’ Jeff Courtnall – both shared
the number. It seems a silly thing in hindsight to put hope in a whole year
based on the coincidence of two mediocre athletes. But I did.And the year let us all down.

There were good things, too, reasons to be thankful, but as
a whole it delivered more struggle than joy. It didn’t defeat us though. We
survived, and there’s victory in that. There was certainly a lot worse that
could happen, I don’t need reminding. But it was hardly my year. Don’t worry. I’m not wallowing in it, just writing about
it. And lucky for 2015, it comes with no expectations and a pretty low bar.
It’s sure to be another quick one, regardless.

I’ve thought a lot about the passage of time, how it crawls
and flies. How different memories grow and shrink in the mind, shortening or
expanding the memories of time. Those joyous moments that speed by tend to live
longer and broader in the memory. While those ones that creep can disappear
altogether. I’ve thought about how routines can play tricks on time, stringing
things together with order and filing them away in a single box. We need those
routines, but they chisel at time. Destroy it.

I decided awhile back that the way to make time feel longer
was to fill it with experiences. Unique adventures, journeys, new explorations.
Those things stand sturdier against the compression. But without some order and
routine, it can all become a blur, too.

The last year seems a blur, for certain. Most of the
memories that will last are not good ones, the phone calls delivering bad news,
the great frustrations, the long nights.

It makes me wonder why it is we force everything into the
bookends of a year. Was it a good one or a bad one, like a vintage of wine. The
truth is, good and bad happen every year, every month, every day.

2014’s ultimate sin was my own expectations. And in that
way, 2015 remains lucky.

I’m not looking for anything special.So maybe we’ll find it.

And maybe, like the cheese in the case, it will have been
there all along.

Monday, January 5, 2015

It seems every family has one. I remember growing up in our
rather large family that my younger brother was our designated barfer. Whenever
even the slightest cold would work its way through the gaggle of siblings, he’d
end up hung over a bucket for a few hours or a few days.

In more recent years, my own kids have had a fairly open
competition for who would carry the mantle in our family. They’ve all done
their share of regurgitation.

But as I look back over the years, and read the related
posts, I realize that one particular family member has dominated the
competition of late. And if there was any doubt, the crown was officially won at
a recent holiday gathering.

The Boy holding his new Paw
Patrol figures -- yet unable to
hold down his stomach contents.

Let me briefly set the scene. For the past decade or so –
roughly since my siblings and I began getting married and starting our own
families – my parents have hosted a post-Christmas family gathering and
gift-exchange known as Ruddy Christmas. It usually happens the first weekend
after the actual Christmas. This year, however, due to the strange alignment of
the holidays and weekends, and the various travel plans of those involved, the
gathering did not take place until three days after the New Year. While other
families were busy preparing for the return to school and stripping their
houses of holiday décor, we were engaging in one last Christmas bash.

Since its inception, Ruddy Christmas has always been a bit
of a show – if only due to the sheer number of people and gifts crammed into
one modestly-sized home. We have a big family, which has only grown over the
years. Two parents (now grandparents), seven adult siblings and their significant
others, some seventeen grandchildren, and add in our uncle and/or aunt on occasion,
and let’s just say we’re probably violating the local fire code.

To outsiders, our raucous little gift exchange can seem like
quite an “ordeal” – as it was famously described by one former attendee. But it
also has an order to it.

This year’s orderly ordeal seemed to be going as planned. Most
of the adults were tightly packed in the kitchen and dining area, sharing
stories, enjoying cocktails and some even playing cards.The kids had just settled down to a movie
after an initial hour-plus of rough housing and chocolate milk. A few of the
parents – myself among them – found a spot on the couch, with our offspring
draped over us, as we watched the latest Netflix offering. My 4 year-old son settled onto my lap, and
even started to fall asleep.

Dinner was about to be served, and the gifts waited in a
hulking mass around the tree. That’s when the soon to be crowned barf champion
slid off my lap and turned to me with tears in his eyes and a telltale
ghost-white expression.

“My tummy hurts,” he whined.

I’ve learned the hard way to take him seriously when he says
such a thing. When he’s not feeling well and tells me this, I know I have less
than a minute before he’s going to hurl.

The weird thing, though, is that he’d been perfectly fine
all day. In fact, he was rolling around with his cousins on the floor just moments
before we decided to calm them with a movie.

Still, his look and whine level told me this was serious.

“Let’s get you to the bathroom,” I said as I leapt from the
couch.

My parent's first-floor bathroom lies across the kitchen/dining
area from the family room and down the hall.It was going to be long trip, especially navigating all the legs. So I
hurriedly began the trek walking him in front of me across carpeted rugs toward the hardwood expanse
crowded with adults.

We'd just crossed onto the hardwoods when I -- and everyone else at the gathering --
heard that special combination of sounds: a gag, a gush, and a splat. I froze,
as I’m apt to do in these situations, as curdle chocolate milk and bile spread across
the floor like a Rorschach on steroids.

I saw sorrow in it.

I also saw splatter hitting a jacket that had unfortunately
found its way to the floor and also the back of someone’s leather boots.A person was in the boots, too. Luckily it turned out the boots belonged to the
up-chucker’s mother – my wife – who was standing at the island between the kitchen
and dining room putting the final touches on a beautifully planned salad.

﻿

It was a Beautiful Salad.

Well, to say a pall fell on the festivities would be
understatement. With all the hors
d'oeuvres and beverages that filled our stomachs, and the acidy aroma that filled
the air, I half expected my boy’s actions to kick off an epic Stand-By-Me style
Barf-o-Rama.Luckily, that didn’t happen. Though it felt
like it had.

Instead, the evening forged ahead.We cleaned up the vomit, washed the soiled
clothing, and finished making the salad.My
wife I considered leaving immediately, but the snow outside had just turned to
freezing rain, and inside the consensus was that his voluminous vomit must have
been caused by excessive amounts of chocolate and horse play.At least, that’s what we chose to believe.

Dinner and the gift exchange happened according to plan. Though neither the salad, nor anything else, was as beautiful as before.

Still, lots of toys, books and clothes were opened and enjoyed. And one less celebrated crown was bestowed, as the boy
officially became our family’s Barf King and forever added his name to
Ruddy Christmas lore.

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About Me

I'm a writer, a husband and a father of four. I once worked in news in Washington, D.C., and served as a speechwriter for a spell. Now I work in upstate New York, teach and help raise our kids. This is where I write about it.